


slumber

by irabelas



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, End-Game spoilers, F/M, Headcanon, Metafiction, Romance, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:59:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 3,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irabelas/pseuds/irabelas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all its worth, Fen'harel did not see it coming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> meta turned fic. spoilers and headcanon abound. slight spoiler(s) for the masked empire.

Every year, Fen’harel would wake up.

One year and a day had passed since the eluvian was closed.

Still, the empire was at war with itself. A quick look around at the world told him as much.

Still, the eluvians were closed - too dangerous, too frightening to open until the warring had died down. Some were broken and dark, other’s simply just as still and silent as he had last seen them.

His eyes caught the eluvian. It too, was still and silent. Just as he had left it.

”No, not yet.”

Fen’harel went to sleep.

A hundred years and a day passed.

The scorching of burnings bodies and the sounds of arrows digging into flesh filled the world. Humans - no, the shems, we’re there, spoiling the People with the rot of mortality.

They would endure - they always had, he thought, even as a savage horde of humans rolled over the world, swallowing everything and only spitting out what they could control.

Still, the People warred with themselves. Bodies burned instead of buried - not returning whence they came, embers sizzling into the world, filling lungs and polluting the world itself.

No, not yet. The People were not ready yet. He was not ready.

Fen’harel went to sleep.

A millennia and a day passed.

The war had stopped. Enslavement had begun. Their lips moving, their prayers unheard, their gods forfeit.

They can’t hear you, Fen’harel said. The murmurs. The silken, the heart-wrung and aching, the mad and greedy mummers still went on. No one can hear you, he repeated. If his golden brethren could not even hear him, how could they hear the whispers of slaves and masters?

Forgive me, Fen’harel said to the mirror. It shun its mesmerizing glow, awake but silent, not responding to his words.

You have to forgive me. The mirror remained indifferent - his plea unheard and ignored.

Fen’harel went to sleep - the fade warm and magical, memories of his brothers and sisters still lukewarm and somehow there, back in the past of a thousand years ago. He dreamt of magic that took decades to preform, of Dreamers waking up after years of slumber, of a time when elvhen was the common tongue and when magic was the pride and joy of an empire soon forgotten. It was home - comfortable, like sinking into a warm bath after a snowstorm.

However, even the hottest baths run cold - and this time, Fen’harel stirred in his slumber.

Someone was there.

But who? No one had been there for centuries; no one had opened up one of the mirrors, not since before, not since the war began, it had ended now and they didn’t know how to anymore; no one had set their foot in the forgotten crossroads, the pinnacle of an empire-

Fen’harel saw her - heard the first mortal words: _fen’harel enansal_ \- and his breath drew like it had not done for millennial. The only light being the simmering eluvian behind her form, glimmering like the moon on a dark lake.

Still, the mirrors slept idly by as she came and left.

This time, Fen’harel did not.


	2. Chapter 2

The orb he carried so proudly before - a masterpiece, he remember Falon’din calling it - was still where he had left it. Hidden away deep in the Arbor Wilds, untouched and waiting, hoping for someone to claim it. It was hungry; the power it held was brimming over, this orb he had held, shown the world his power with, wanted to be devoured.

It was in its company he had seen his brothers and sisters, his friends, together. Falon’din and Andruil bickering, their ways different but still the same, always over some shared idea but never the same approach. Together, their power and knowledge had let spheres hang in the sky, their People looking up at them, worshipping them with gold and roots, metal and dust left at their doorstep, every whim and wish always granted.

Music had carried over Arlathan from dawn till dusk in their favor; on special occasions the peacocks would roam, the white and golden halla run in open fields, flowers would burst into bloom as songs in elvhen asked them to. All this, was what the People enjoyed in the joyous moments of celebration.

It was with the orb that Fen’harel had seen it all begin to rot.

Soon, Falon’din’s and Andruil’s bickering became heated. Their ideas became different. Their approach too inconvenient for each other - sticks in the wheel of each other’s good fortune. They turned. They turned on each other - and with them, their brothers and sisters took sides. They stood in lines, like chess pieces, calculating each step carefully but never bothering to look at the board they were playing on; the entire Elvhen empire.

Not him, though. Fen’harel did as always - looking off into the distance, the grey between the black and the white, the judge on the sidelines. The People begun fighting amongst themselves - blood ran down the golden stones of Arlathan, spirits of wisdom turning into pride and anger, spirits of compassion into envy.

And still, the slaves we’re the ones who stilled, sitting on their hands as their masters and the Gods they had been marked for fought.

Their wrath was warm and starved - the blood of innocents, the blood of the guilty, the blood of slaves and masters alike filled pools of wisdoms and the wells of worship while the Gods bickered amongst themselves. The People saw this in their prayers - none which were fulfilled. As they understood their pantheon was not there, neither responsive nor watching, the world fell into despair. Who was there to blame? Fen’harel himself did not know, even as the The People turned to him for guidance.

He obliged.

He looked to the masses and spoke the truth - they needed a new order, a new world. They did not need the pantheon of the old ways - and as the blood flowed and even the Gods grew weary, Fen’harel was there with honeysuckle words and a peace offering. A truce; a means to an end.

They, the People, had needed a new order, a new world; even if that meant destroying the old one.

And now, the orb was still in his hand. Its ridges and bumps were as familiar as the ones on his hands - the surge of power that laid within it thrumming away but not warm, no, not as usual. It stayed still - simply as the glorified craved rune it once had been. The key he once had used to seal his brethren away.

Fen’harel set the orb down.

He had been wrong.

Arlathan could not come back.


	3. Chapter 3

He was weak, weary, worn. The very magic he once possessed, which he had held so dear and shared with his peers, was gone. A steady feeling of something pressing against his throat, a simmering in his chest - as if he’d been diving in a river for too long - clamped its jaws around him. Fen’harel snapped his fingers. It did not lessen, it did not retaliate.

Then it was true. The magic was gone - his exploration of the Fade had not affected him in any other way than intellectually, and even the simplest of spell sent him reeling to the ground like a too old grandfather. As the magic had left him, as had he from the memories of the People. All that was left was a picture of greed and glee, standing facing away from every camp from the very people he had tried to save, to raise up, to rescue.

As Fen’harel stepped into the world, he saw their faces for the first time in millennia. The vallaslin hugged their skin, his People - no, the People - proudly taunting the very notion he had fought against. It sickened him - watching as children committed themselves to the unresponsive pantheon, the one’s they still prayed to, that they still worshipped while spitting out his name at their enemies, praying that they take them and leave themselves be.

It was easier in the Fade, where the veil was thin - almost fragile in certain places - to understand this new world. It yielded success; new spirits meeting and greeting him the more he traveled the land. They told him secrets unspoken for decades, showed him glints of their life. He could not be certain though - some showed a sense of happiness and joy, others were filled with sorrow and grief.

The thinner the veil, the more magical and warmer the Fade was, his dreams vivid enough for smells to pass him, the skirting of skin along his fingers, the breath of a thousand year old memories showing itself to only his eyes; he smelled the oil of dwarven mechanism, the wheels and cogs turning for the first time, felt the heat of dragons hatching, saw the birth of a new moon and felt the world shift beneath it.

Where the veil was hard and calloused, the images were stoic, straightforward, grey. He saw the shems capture and enslave the People, the children of stone surfacing, the Qunari enter the world, strong while united yet mad and murderous when apart.

It was then that Fen’harel returned to the eluvian.

He placed a hand on it - he was older now, wiser - surely it must work. The glass was tainted, stained and muddy like oil in water, distorting his reflection. His hand was now big and clawed, his narrow face a muzzle, eyes red and gleaming back at him.

Hands pressed against the glass - this time, from the other side.

” _Ir abelas_ ,” Fen’harel said. The hands begun to slam against the glass, no sound emitting, the white and red of knuckles and bones, of despair and deception, never breaking the glass, ”it is no longer a wrong I can right.”

When he had left the world for its fate - no, to let the world make its own fate - Fen’Harel had never imagined it would be like this. None of his kin were left - rot had effected his brethren, claiming them to be as the shems, a slow decay or time that was no longer infinite but short and fleeting, the magic gone from him as it was gone from the world.

Hands dug into palms, nails scraping, blood flowing, no - not this, why is it like this? It was not what I wanted. They needed to learn without guidance, they were free, I made them free, they could’ve-

Behind him, for the first time in thousands of years, the mirror made a sound.

” _Solas, harellan_ ,” the mirror laughed.

Fen’harel took a breath.

Betrayer of one’s own kind.

The words hung in the air like dew clings to grass - fleeting, entirely too little to be enough.

He could not return now - he was ashamed. The self-imposed exile of thousands of years was not enough. It did not fix this blunder, this mistake. His brethren knew it - for all of their silence, all of their ignorance and lack of acknowledgement, they had been there; ever present and watching.

And they did not forgive.


	4. Chapter 4

There were none like him left. A priest of Dumat, sleeping endlessly in the Deep Roads, locked away, blighted body and blighted mind, but power still immense, power still enough.

It did not take much to lure him out.

Once he came, Fen’harel was not disappointed. He was not frightened as the creature laid its hand on the _Foci_. His godforsaken pride did not even force him to intervene as the orb shun with its forgotten glory.

For the first time in a long time, Fen’harel was happy. 


	5. Chapter 5

The sky was broken, scarred, magic from the veil pouring out like blood from a wound. With it, spirits ran into the world, their very beings altered and deformed. Even as he slept, the spirits he'd known for millennia, those he called friends, were not there, ripped from their homes and thrown into a world that did not understand, did not care enough to even try to comprehend-

No, this was all because of him. His friends were hurting because of his mistake.

The amulet - a jawbone from a wolf ( _fitting_ , he had thought to himself) - would keep him like this; spending even just a fortnight out in the world, away from the Crossroads, and he had begun to feel the implications of the human world. The amulet would keep that at bay - for a time. It thrummed against his chest to the beat of his heart as he reached the camp. It was a large one - refugees and soldiers bundled together like children scolded for fighting, their faces and armor illuminated with a sickly green tint as if the tear in the veil had been a second sun.

He wanted to help - no, needed to help, he was in debt, responsible.

The town was called Haven - the Chantry located in the heart of it all, standing firm and unmoving like a tall oak, and within its cellars laid a woman on the floor, a dozen guards armed and ready to strike at any given moment. The woman - he saw now, was elven. The vallaslin adorned her face, hugging freckles, covering birthmarks and scars as if she was a dappled doe.

Fen’harel shook his head, there were more pressing matters to deal with. Pointedly, the glowing mark located on her left hand - which the Seeker so kindly had allowed him to examine.

There was barely a scar; just a thrum of magic, pulsing at the same rate as the Breach - as the shems had begun to call it - did. Her heartbeat was quick, breath hitched and whimpers escaping her. It was as if the veil was thin solely around her hand, a pressing warmth leaving the mark as if her body was a furnace.

For a moment, Fen’harel slipped his hand into the woman’s marked one. He felt the power of a thousand years surging in it, pulsing like a heartbeat and his own almost stopped. It was familiar. It was there.

It came from his orb.  



	6. Chapter 6

He had never thought to see her like this. Always, he had seen her as the marked woman; the Herald of Andraste.

But his hand slipped into hers again, and there was no pulsing, no surge of energy wanting to be released. It was calm, cool, collected. Just her hand against his - fingers to fingers, palm to palm and soon, lips to lips.

It was she who started it - who tilted his head her way with gentle fingers in a dream, who pulled away when he didn’t respond, who leaned in for more and gladly accepted his wandering hands when his thoughts were wandering too.

She was rough and starved at times, even if her eyes were always soft. He knew that he needed to end it; he had told her as much.

Yet she came back for more and he did not protest, did not stop her when her fingers touched his yet again.

And then, after a particularly long mission far away, he saw her again - saw her smile, bright as the sun, the crows feet by her eyes, the curve of her lips and the sky without the tear illuminating her face on the balcony - and Fen’harel knew he could not.

He saw her for who she was; the dappled sun on her cheeks, the warmth of her smile, the never-ending chance to keep his mind off of some slightly more pressing things. Her kisses were strong and hungry in the evening, soft and mellow by dawn, coy and peckish at noon. He knew because he had tasted them all - sought her out at all times, needed her to be near him if that meant she would have something new to offer him.

She always did.

He had begun to watch her from afar (he’d call it observing, thank you very much, if she ever caught him in the act, even if that meant he’d have to tolerate her smiling mischievously for their remaining time together) riveting in how her body moved, how she was real, alive and breathing; a beacon of what could be.

The warmth from her was no longer just from the mark he had studied so intently; it radiated off of her, sending heat through his body at her touch as if she was a sun. He might’ve thought the attraction to be simply physical, she was, indeed, quite beautiful - yet a flutter of pride swelled inside him whenever she came to him for his opinions.

He could not stop himself when he saw her in the morning, hair tousled and face lit up by the dawn, and cursed himself for this adolescent-like infatuation with her. She was young - but wise beyond her years, genuinely kind, her grace an otherworldly relic. A rare sight - even for Fen’harel.

In his dreams, he visited memories of their first kiss, the second, the third. He traveled back to his own memories, looked to old flames but saw nothing alike in them.

Fen’harel looked back on the night her hands slipped over his shoulders, whispering _ha’ma’in_ , put the old knife away, in a voice and accent that wasn’t quite right and drew him closer, made him lighter, made him wonder what could be.

He went to the eluvian in his dreams, pressing a hand to the stained glass. If she was real - and the tear in the veil was gone, his one mistake healed by another - then they could be real too.

When his eyes would travel to hers, his own would soften - he didn’t need a mirror to notice that. By now, his brethren would’ve laughed, smiled, called him smitten, enamored - hopeless.

A hand traveled to the small of her back slowly, the other closing the book in her hands swiftly. If that was what he was - let it be. Tomorrow could wait.

She welcomed the kiss and everything that came with it.


	7. Chapter 7

”In another world,” he dared not finish the sentence.

In another world he would’ve pulled her close, bury his face in her hair, let himself kiss her from dawn till dusk, fill her to the edges with him, leave her breathless and beautiful every day he-

He could not.

”Why not this one?”

He hadn’t come here to hurt her. Yet, as she stared up at him, wondering and thoughtful, curious as to what this truth, this terrible lie he’d been keeping from her, was - Fen’harel could not go through with it.

He told her about the vallaslin instead.

That had hurt her too, shoulders shaking and head hung low and then - that moment of clarity where he could tell her, be honest, no trickery, nothing - was gone.

He couldn’t. She would hate him. It was selfish and cruel - craven, even - and anger grew in his chest at his idiocy, at his thoughtlessness, but he could not let her despise him.

They had been at the temple of Mythal together, they had seen the destruction the People’s warring had wrought, they had heard Abelas words together, seen what had been lost, a relic of an empire where she would’ve thrived.

She deserved the truth more than anyone - he couldn’t keep this away from her, he loved her but no half-lies or promises would restore what he had destroyed all those years ago.

It was best she did not know.

Her fingers, intertwined with his own, shook as her lips quivered. Doe eyes peered up at him; unrelenting she met his gaze, waiting for the explanation he could not give.

Like ink in water he had diluted her; made her unusable, poisonous, turned her from her purpose. She had done the same to him, but in a different way - not even the wolf amulet hanging around his neck could’ve prevented that.

Fat tears rolled down her cheeks and Fen’harel felt a stab of guilt in his throat.

”I can’t. I’m sorry.” He drew back his hand, uncertain - waiting, watching - he didn’t want to let go, no, not yet-

For the first time in thousands of years, Fen’harel hesitated. He was scared of the power she held over him, how he without any second thought sought her opinion, how he wondered what she would think of him if she knew-

All those years of self-imposed exile, of dread, of letting his People fall from glory and into despair would not be for naught. He needed to right his wrongs - and he had known better than to be with her, but she was all he wanted, and he had not wanted anything in a long time.

No, out of all things, Fen’harel was frightened.

For in her company he was no longer alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit as of January 1st, 2015 + slight spoilers in this note:
> 
> It has come to my attention that the last chapter may not actually be completely headcanon regarding Solas’ feelings and his bail-out with the vallaslin. In a podcast with NerdAppropriate Solas writer, Patrick Weekes, basically confirmed this entire chapter as canon. My tags will, however, remain as the first 6 chapters are mainly headcanon and not confirmed as of yet. Thank you all for reading and leaving kudos! ♥


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